


xxxHolic ficlets 2008-2012

by juniperberry



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ficlet, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Multi, Short, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-04-19 12:37:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14237463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniperberry/pseuds/juniperberry
Summary: Previously published on my LJ and my DW accounts, when I was still fairly active in xxxHolic and CLAMP fandom.





	1. Chapter 1

**Yuuko, protection**

Yuuko watched them, and thought.

The shop murmured and whispered around her in the voices of small girls, flirting with space and dimension the way an autumn leaf flirts with wind. It would shiver around her, and she did not need Mokona to tell her when it was growing weak.

Her protections were dwindling, until That Time came. She would do her best to hold them, but there was only so much she could do.

She watched Watanuki chastise Doumeki for stealing another croquette.

There was only so much protection she could provide, and then it would be up to her part-time helper and the few that he had gathered around himself.

Doumeki met her eyes over his cup of tea, and she raised her glass of sake to him in a brief, passing salute.

The two of them knew the cost of protection, and the strength needed to maintain it.

***  
**Maru, Moro, Mokona, Watanuki, snowfight**

"Ooh, it's snowing," Moro said.

"It's snowing," Maru echoed. Watanuki crept up behind them and looked out into the slowly falling snow.

"If you get on some warm clothes, you can play in it," he suggested, and smiled at the twin shrieks.

"Sweaters and scarves!"

"Gloves and mittens!"

"Mokona wants to go too!" Mokona cried, and bounced after them. Watanuki sipped hot tea and left them to it as Mugetsu curled around his neck.

"Watanuki has to come with us!"

"Master has to come too!"

"Has to!"

Maru and Moro pounded up to him, wearing long sweaters and jackets, knit scarves around their necks and stocking caps stretched tight over their hair. Mokona sported a small red-and-white striped scarf that had probably begun life as a stocking. The twins held out his long coat and boots, and a hat with floppy ear flaps.

"Thank you," he said, and pulled on the coat. "Go on and get some shoes on, and you can play outside."

"Snowfight!" Mokona caroled.

"Snowfight!"

"Snowfight!" the twins chorused.

Mugetsu tightened around Watanuki's throat, and he swallowed the laugh that tried to creep out.

***  
**Doumeki/Watanuki, autumn, pancakes**

"You're hopeless," Doumeki said, and Watanuki blinked sleepily at him.

"Huh wha?"

"You're hopeless," Doumeki repeated mildly, and Watanuki shook his head.

"'M not."

"Can't hold your liquor at all," Doumeki went on. Watanuki winced and mumbled something that sounded like "Shut up."

Doumeki pulled open the sliding paper doors, to let a little autumn air inside the stuffy room. Watanuki grumbled but pulled himself into a sitting position, leaning tiredly back against the divan.

Doumeki looked at him solemnly. Thin, never-aging, and yet so old so quickly, trying to fill shoes he was never meant to fit.

"I'm making pancakes," he said. "There's some eki-kiyabe on the table."

"Thanks," Watanuki said quietly, glancing up briefly. Doumeki looked away from the constant apology he could see in Watanuki's eyes, and started for the kitchen.

"Better take it fast," he said. "Mokona and the girls will be up in a little bit."

***  
**Kohane/Doumeki/Watanuki**

Kohane knew she was really a replacement.

It wasn't that Shizuka-kun and Kimihiro-kun didn't love her. But even when the three of them were tangled between a layer of sheets, with the gentle pressure of the shop over them and a long day of university behind them, she knew.

They didn't love her any less than they ever had. Kimihiro-kun still made her favorite foods and Shizuka-kun would brush her hair out after a night when she'd been entirely too worn out to remember to braid it. They saw her, they knew her, and they loved her as much as she loved them.

But she was not the right shape. She was not the girl with bad luck tangled around her like unruly curls; she was not the girl with a bright smile and sad eyes and a gulf of untouchability around her.

Kohane did not mean to be a replacement. Shizuka-kun and Kimihiro-kun did not treat her like a replacement. But she knew, really, that she was; she was the girl who saw them, who could touch them, and not fear that her fingers would draw blood with the lightest touch.

***  
**Five Things That Never Happened to Watanuki Kimihiro**

I.

Himawari leaned forward, just enough to brush their lips together, and Watanuki could feel his heart pound so fast and loud he was sure she could hear it, since she was close enough to breathe with him.

II.

It was between one morning and the next that the spirits disappeared. He walked to school unmolested, attended class without distraction, and walked home to his apartment undisturbed.

It took a month to realize he was uneasy with the absence of the spirits; it took him two to actually miss them.

III.

He never really saw the spirit; it engulfed him from behind, and the stench of it, the feel of it was enough to make him falter and collapse, a cloud of smoky tentacles and eyes surrounding him, and his hand twitching just a few centimeters from a strange, polished wooden fence.

IV.

Watanuki had never met the guy, but he heard about him all over the school. It was such a shame, rustled the whispered gossip, that Doumeki Shizuka-sama had left the school, too bad for the archery team, too bad for all the girls pining for his looks. Watanuki had never met the guy, but the school mourned his leaving as though he'd died, and that was enough to make Watanuki's hackles rise whenever that name was mentioned.

V.

They didn't believe him about the spirits, and he didn't really expect them too, in all honesty. But the way they locked him up, clucking and shaking their heads, made him wonder if they weren't right, after all. Maybe he was a mad man, jumping at things that didn't exist and voices that weren't real.

It made him cherish the local priest's visits to the asylum--the man himself was annoying, but annoyance was a small price to pay for freedom from chittering voices and slimy fingers and wild, yellowed eyes that no amount of medication could possibly make disappear.

***  
**Kohane, Possibilities**

Kohane looked around the park. Shizuka-kun and Obaasan had decided a picnic was in order. Kimihiro was no where to be seen, but Kohane wasn't worried. Shizuka-kun would take care of him.

In the meantime, she sat, and looked at the green of the trees and the red in the kites that children were flying. The world was opening around her, colors and sounds, paths spreading out like tree branches, and fruit appearing everywhere, a garden unrestrained and eager. She watched the world unfold, spread open like a flower, and took a deep breath.

 

***  
**Honest**

"You're not affected by me either, are you? Just like Doumeki-kun."

Yuuko did not answer at first; instead she concentrated on blowing a smoke ring. She could never manage it, not like that creep Clow.

"No," she said at last. "I'm not."

Himawari looked down. It was winter time, and Watanuki had been sent to get some seasonal alcohol. Most likely, Himawari would be gone by the time he got back.

"Do you have a wish?" Yuuko asked at length. "I can't take away your bad luck. It would be a terribly high price."

Himawari shook her head. "I know that," she said quietly. "I figured it would be really expensive. Besides," she added, "because of you, I can hang out with Doumeki-kun and Watanuki-kun honestly, and that means a lot. And I have Tanpopo, and that means a lot, too." She looked down. "I was...just wondering. If I have dreams...just little ones, of what it might be like to be with someone without hurting them...if I have little dreams like that, would it be all right if I dream of you, too?"

Yuuko pondered. Smoke drifted up from her pipe, a steady steam in the cold air.

"I can grant you that," she said. "For the price of the ribbons in your hair."

Himawari blinked, but readily reached up and undid the yellow ribbons. Tanpopo cheeped on her shoulder. When she handed Yuuko the ribbons, she was careful not to touch her hand.

"Thank you," Himawari said, and bowed. Her curly, unruly hair tumbled around her face. Yuuko smiled at her and watched her go.

If the future were a little more clear about such things, she might have promised Himawari-chan more than just dreams.

***

**xxxHolic, AU, BoardingHouse!Watanuki**

 

"Our roof is leaking again, Mr. Landlord."

Watanuki sighed. "I'll see what I can do about it," he said, trying to keep a hold of his temper, "but you are a rain spirit, you know. I've fixed your roof five times this year."

The young woman shrugged, her gothic dress rustling with layers of petticoats. "It's still leaking," she said, "and that child might catch cold. You don't want that, do you?"

Watanuki thought of the Zashiki Warashi catching a cold. Not only would she feel miserable, the Ame Warashi and all of the Karasu Tengu would conspire to make his life a throbbing, migraine-ish hell.

"I'll look at it in a few hours, Ame Warashi-san," he said, bowing a little, before continuing down the stairs. He was just lucky, really, that the building was largely made of stone and concrete, or he'd have serious water damage and mold in that apartment, too.

He worked in this boarding house as the landlord-in-residence and superintendent. Thus, when the Ame Warashi's roof began to leak, or the toilet in the fortuneteller's flat clogged up, or the wiring didn't work in the Raijuu's lighting fixture, it was up to him to attend to it.

He was on his way down to the closet on the first floor, which held all sorts of cleaning supplies and tools and quick fix-it things like spackle. On the way he saw the Neko Musume, wearing less than usual as she headed out into the world; the oni from the second floor, who gave him a toothy grin and a wave; the vampire hunter (who gave Watanuki the creeps) passed him on the stairs and barely spared him a glance. Watanuki nodded and smiled at each of them. They were his tenants, his responsibility.

There was a boy at the bottom of the stairs, looking rather scruffy. A girl stood beside him, holding his hand in hers and looking around with interest.

"Welcome," Watanuki said. "This is Ichihara Yuuko's Condo's for the Odd and Impoverished. I'm Watanuki, the superintendent."

"Ah," the boy said. "I'm Syaoran. This is the Lady Sakura. Is there--do you have a place to rent?"


	2. listen, ame-warashi

The Ame-Warashi paused in her ministrations to listen.

Humans never listened. They were everywhere, underfoot practically, using and coveting and clamouring; so no matter what, they could never listen, even if they were inclined to do so.

Still, she listened.

The pure child in the human park was much better. It rustled and gave a contented vibration from deep in its roots. She liked that.

Rain was falling on a mountain far away, but she heard the flute music and wondered about that girl. The Zashiki-Warashi was a gentle child, and just that: a child. She had hardly ever moved from the safety of her mountain, and never had she done it for a human before.

The Ame-Warashi returned her attentions to the rain, and refused to think about why that hurt so much.


	3. warm, ame-warashi/zashiki-warashi

The Ame Warashi's fingers were cool, odd when the both of them were so hot and breathless, but the Zashiki Warashi didn't care about that--just that her own fingers were slipping past buttons and lace, and the Ame Warashi's arm was pushing aside her skirt, and those cool fingers were finding that electric spot.

The Zashiki Warashi buried one hand in loose blue curls and the other squeezed a soft, round breast, and the Ame Warashi made a noise, lost in their mouths. Her fingers moved, and her other hand pushed the Zashiki Warashi's skirt up, and neither of them spoke or thought much beyond the movement of fingers and knees and lips, beyond the electric skittering of nerves, beyond the feeling of warmth between and around and inside the two of them, shared.


	4. treasure room, d/w

prompt: treasure room

The wood floor was unforgiving against his shoulders, and something small and sharply cornered was pressing into his right hip, but Shizuka found he didn't care too much. Watanuki was straddling him, warm and lean, and Shizuka could barely stop kissing him to complain about the conditions. He didn't want to snap this, tentative and new and impulsive and delicate.

Watanuki gave no explainations, and Shizuka didn't want to pull away from the warm mouth to ask. One of his hands tangled in Watanuki's hair, long enough to fall over his fingers, and his other hand found Watanuki's waist, hip, thigh. There were too many clothes between them, but the way Watanuki was shifting was nothing short of riveting, and Shizuka wanted to drown himself in it, in them, in the space created between them. He felt Watanuki's hands sliding inside his shirt, and when he made a noise he felt a smile against his mouth.

Shizuka tilted his head, let Watanuki kiss him more deeply, and let himself fall to the man's rhythm, spinning out his trust with his fingers, twitches of his hips. He would, as always, follow where Watanuki led.


	5. rain, aw/zw

***

xxxHolic #2

It didn't escape the Zashiki Warashi's notice that it was raining the day she realized her special person didn't--and couldn't--love her the way she might have wanted.

Not that she really knew what that was, exactly; she was still rather vague on it all, except that he made her smile and teary and her heart thump a little faster, and that was enough, wasn't it? Except she would never make him feel that way, even though he liked her enough to give her White Day gifts every year without complaint.

The Ame Warashi appeared not too long after the sprinkle started, the raindrops going poro poro on the leaves of the nearby poplars. She huffed, but didn't say anything at all, and held her umbrella over the Zashiki Warashi so that she wouldn't get dripped on. Eventually the rain spirit settled herself next to the Zashiki Warashi on the rock, silent and listening.

"I'm glad he has them," she said at last, once her tears had dried a bit. "But I'm still so sad he didn't--I couldn't--"

"I know," the Ame Warashi said, and her voice was unusually gentle. Her dress was a frothy spillage of black lace, from the high collar and gloves to the long skirt and petticoats. Black lace ribbons tied up her blue pigtails. She shifted closer a little bit. The Zashiki Warashi supposed there could have been more, about how he was a human, and it wouldn't have worked out anyway, but the rain spirit didn't say anything and the Zashiki Warashi was grateful. In the quiet between them, the rain said poro poro on the leaves and pata pata on the stretched fabric of the Ame Warashi's umbrella, a song in counterpoint.


	6. Wild West AU, Yuuko/Himawari

Yuuko watched as the girl made her way into the shop. It looked like an opium den, especially with all the incense, but it was not; it was just Yuuko, lying on her divan and smoking tobacco in an elegant pipe.

The girl was dressed like a proper Western lady, for all that she was obviously Japanese. Her hair was pulled into two pigtails, black curls spiralling down her back. She looked around with curious green eyes.

"Welcome to my shop," Yuuko said, her voice low and throaty. The girl looked at her, and smiled.

"I'm Himawari Kunogi," she said. "I was told by a boy that I could find what I wish for most here."

"Oh?" Yuuko asked, as she slid off the divan in a graceful movement of legs and trailing kimono wrappings. "Which boy?"

"The fortune teller down the street," Himawari said. "He read my palm, and told me that what I wanted most was at the end of the street, in the strange house with the wooden fence."

Yuuko looked at her--really Looked--and smiled. "I do believe he was right," she said. "I ask a heavy price for what you want most, though."

Himawari tilted her head. "How heavy?"

Yuuko glided over, the incense smoke parting around her and trailing in her hair. "What you want," she said, as she reached out and caressed Himawari's cheek, "is to find someone who will love you, correct?"

Himawari blushed a little and nodded, but met her eyes. "My father wants me to marry an employee of his," she said. "He wants to pass the business down to him. I love my father, but...."

"You wanted something else for yourself, in this New World," Yuuko supplied. "Am I right?"

"Yes," Himawari said. "I want to be happy."

"And being with someone who loves you, and whom you love in return...this will make you happy?"

Himawari bit her lip and fidgeted. "I would hope so," she said. "But...if it takes something else to make me happy, I'll understand. Or if I can't pay--well, at least I tried."

Yuuko stroked her cheek. "What if what makes you happy isn't 'normal?' What if it's not at all what your friends, your family, want?"

Himawari looked away for the first time. "It would hurt," she said softly. "I don't know very many people here. But...I am me. Not them. And they are not the ones who have to live my life."

"A good answer," Yuuko said, and stroked Himawari's jaw, and traced it down to her throat. "Your price, if you wish to pay it, is to stay with me, and accept any consequences that arise from that." She leaned closer and brushed Himawari's lips with her own. "The price and the wish are entwined, in your case," she breathed, her warm breath feathering across Himawari's cheeks. The girl had closed her eyes and leaned in, and one of her hands reached up to clutch at Yuuko's kimono.

"Do you accept?" Yuuko asked softly, her thumb stroking the hollow of Himawari's throat. The girl swallowed thickly, and nodded.

"I do," she said. "I accept."

Yuuko smiled, and caught her hand. "I'll have to close the shop for the rest of the day," she said. "This way, Himawari-chan."

Himawari followed, with her skirts bunched in one hand to keep them off the floor and the fingers of the other laced with Yuuko's.

***

"Eh?" Watanuki peered at the shop. "Yuuko-san's shop is closed."

"Maybe she's busy," Doumeki said. He had two six-round pistols at either hip. Watanuki glared at him.

"...Maybe," he conceded at last. "I did send a girl over earlier today."

"Why?"

"Because that's the direction her fortune indicated," Watanuki said snappishly. "And don't you--get your hand out of that basket! It's Yuuko-san's dinner!"

"Whatever," Doumeki replied, as he munched on a piece of ebi sushi and stuck one finger in his ear.


	7. Geisha, some light D/W

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FAIR WARNING: I wrote this years ago, long before I started getting really informed and educated re: transgender issues. Doumeki isn't trans in this, but he is cross-dressing, and Watanuki reacts as pre-shop-owner Watanuki would, so. Take heed if that's something you might find potentially triggering, and take care of yourselves.

At first, Watanuki wasn't certain what an elaborately clothed geisha was doing in the door of his apartment. And then:

"Oi. Are you going to let me in?"

He started and stepped aside out of sheer reflex. Doumeki dressed as a geisha, with rice powder make-up and a large black wig and a kimono patterned with water lilies.

Doumeki in drag, in other words.

Watanuki leaned against the door and wondered if he would die laughing, once he started.

Doumeki pulled off the wig and ran a hand through his hair. "Oi," he said. "Can I use the bathroom?"

Watanuki snorted. "How do you know I've got one?" He said, snickering. "It's that door, just--ha!--just down there."

"Ah," Doumeki said, and disappeared, leaving the wig sitting on the kotatsu. Watanuki gave in and had a prolonged, poorly muffled fit of hysterical laughter, which only calmed once Doumeki appeared again, his face and neck wiped clean of any and all make-up.

"Why," Watanuki gasped, "why were--you...."

"Yuuko-san asked," Doumeki said simply. He sat gracefully, still wrapped in the water-lily kimono. His obi had a pattern of delicate butterflies.

"Why would she...?" Watanuki blinked. Normally he was the one who had to be shoved into the odd, somewhat humiliating situations.

"It was a favor for a friend of hers," Doumeki said. "You got any tea?"

"No," Watanuki said, a stray chuckle escaping. Even Doumeki being Doumeki couldn't ruin this. "Why you?"

Doumeki blinked at him with placid patience. "She said you would've been incredibly graceless," he said, "and while you're pretty, you just don't have the kind of calm needed for the job."

Watanuki glared at him. "I'm not graceless!" he said indignantly. "And...wait." He looked at Doumeki closely. "Yuuko-san called me pretty?"

Doumeki sighed, his patience apparently running out. "No," he said. "That would be me. Can I have some tea now?"


	8. Confession, D/W

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looking back, I think Doumeki is a little too talkative here, but...eh, this was an early effort.

It had happened shortly after that disastrous fall from the school window. Doumeki barely remembered what they'd been doing--just that Watanuki had done something stupid and self-sacrificing again, as if it were okay. Once the ghost had been exorcised and things had calmed down (i.e. once Yuuko-san had shown up and had seen fit to save them the trouble of more blood loss), Doumeki had grabbed Watanuki by the back of his school uniform and dragged him off.

They had encountered the spirit right after his archery club practice, and he was still wearing his light keiko-gi and hakama. The fabric brushed his legs as he moved. He concentrated on that, and on not cracking the longbow in his hand, while he dragged a flailing, protesting Watanuki into a secluded corridor. The other boy was yelping and yelling and cursing at him, as per usual. Doumeki found he didn't have as much patience for him as he might have, otherwise.

"Oi, you cretin, let me go! I'm not something you can just drag around whenever you feel like it!"

Doumeki let go of Watanuki's school jacket and pinned him with a glare. His face must have looked quite frightening, because Watanuki shut up and actually looked at him.

"Idiot," Doumeki said, and some of the tight, hard hurt coiled around his heart leaked into his voice. "I know you don't see yourself as worth much, but you're the most important person in the world to me, and I will thank you to stop trying to get yourself killed."

"I'm not--I didn't--"

"You are and you did," Doumeki snapped. "Don't do it again, you utter moron."

Watanuki's mouth was working, but nothing was coming out. "Doumeki--" he said at last, in a low voice. "I...I know we're...almost...sort of, kind of almost friends, but...."

Doumeki gave a frustrated snort. "Do your ears work at all, or can you decide what to listen to and what to ignore at will?" He asked. His heart was being squeezed into pulp, like some overripe fruit.

"I...what?" Watanuki was giving him that blank, confused stare.

"You are the most important person to me. Get that in your head."

Watanuki was still staring at him. "O--oh." Finally, light dawning. Took him long enough.

"You don't have to feel the same way," Doumeki said, and while his heart may have been a bruised piece of pulp, the rest of him was relaxing; finally, some of these feelings were being spoken, and little knots of tension were being loosed. "I don't expect you to. But quit thinking nobody would miss you if you died, you little idiot."

"Doumeki..." Watanuki looked really confused now, and unsure of how to clear it all up.

Doumeki shrugged his shoulders. "Let me change, and I'll walk you to Yuuko-san's. And I want inari-zushi and curry rice in my bentou tomorrow."

That shook Watanuki up, onto familiar ground. "I don't take orders, you jerk! And what kind of idiot wants that kind of meal all at once, anyway? You have no taste buds!"


	9. Doumeki/Kohane, prompt: blind

The hairbrush tugged through her hair until it was smooth as silk, lying down her back in soft waves. She could do this herself--it wasn't as though she couldn't find the hair on top of her own head--but he liked to do it for her.

That was one thing she had always known about Shizuka-kun: that he liked to do things for the one he loved, even if they could do for themselves. Perhaps especially then.

And because she did not mind, and knew where the gesture came from, she let him brush her hair for her.

"Will you read me a story before bed?" she asked, and he ran the fingers of one hand tenderly down the side of her face. They tickled her ear.

"Sure," he said, and she could hear the clink of the hairbrush set on the vanity table. "Which one do you want?"

"One about a family," she said, as she stood and made her way carefully to the Western-style bed. It was nice and big, and she didn't have to find it with her toes. Shizuka-kun had told her the coverlet and pillows were done in shades of gold, similar to the color of her hair. She took his word for it.

"All right," Shizuka-kun said, and she heard him moving around the room even as she settled herself in bed. She felt him climb in beside her, and she moved closer, finding his shoulder with the ease of long practice.

"Will it be one you learned when you were at the shop?" She never said 'Kimihiro-kun' anymore than he said 'Watanuki'--some wounds went deep and were long in healing, and theirs were simply not there yet.

"No," he said. His heartbeat was a steady throb beneath her ear. "One my grandfather told me."

"You could tell me about him," she said, smiling. "I understand he was a lot like you."

"Hm," Shizuka-kun said, and gathered himself to begin a story.


	10. Random Doumeki/Watanuki pornlet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was initially going to be a longer fic, with Saiga as Doumeki's older half-brother maybe, IDK. I never got any further with it than this, which is why there's a faint possibly abusive background on Doumeki's side of things. Anything not canon-compliant was going to be explained, and....yeah, that didn't happen, obviously. This was a stumble-from-my-bed, rush-to-my-computer-and-get-it-written fic, which is why it's a) short, b) unfinished, and c) deeply inspired but hopefully not too derivative of other fics, which I'm linking/providing urls for below.
> 
> But there's porn, so yay?
> 
> Slightly AU, and heavily inspired by imp_fic's "He Goes Down," found here: https://impfics.livejournal.com/23192.html
> 
> Also still_ciircee's fic, here: https://still-ciircee.livejournal.com/13873.html

When Shizuka goes down on Watanuki the first time, he's glad his brother isn't home; not only are he and Watanuki in the living room, they really don't need his brother's color commentary. Watanuki is skittish as it is without someone else noticing that he's human enough to want sex. Shizuka knows Saiga will rib him about it later--he'll notice the way Shizuka's lips are swollen, or perhaps some indefinite air that only someone with Sight can sense--but as long as Watanuki is gone it will be all right.

Shizuka is particular about what he will put in his mouth, but he has no problem with closing his mouth over the head of Watanuki's cock and sucking, just a little. Watanuki squeaks and jerks and clenches one hand in the upholstry of the couch, and his other hand curls around Shizuka's head, the fingers trailing through his hair and twitching against his scalp, like Watanuki wants to clench that hand too but doesn't dare.

Shizuka has maneuvered them so that Watanuki's legs are over Shizuka's shoulders, and he cradles Watanuki's hips in both hands. He can feel Watanuki's heels dig into his ribs, and the way he drags his legs up and down Shizuka's shoulders with every suck and tiny lick makes Shizuka glad he ever thought of doing this. The taste is salty and bitter in his mouth, but if Watanuki chopped up a raw lemon for Shizuka's lunch he would probably eat it, simply because it would have the taste of Watanuki's hands and the sense of his life beyond them in every slice.

Sucking him isn't much different. Beyond the taste and the heavy feel of him in Shizuka's mouth, he can feel the sense of him too, much like the way he can tell if something has been made by Watanuki or not. It's a centering thing, because Shizuka is nervous and doesn't want to appear nervous, not about this and never in front of Watanuki.

Watanuki whimpers and gives very breathy, soft sighs, but he isn't nearly as loud as Shizuka expected. For someone who yells everyday, for someone who will dance and twirl and nearly carol out what the day's lunch is to a lonely girl, he is surprisingly quiet, as if he realizes that he's in an apartment and the neighbors might hear, and he would never be so rude as to disturb the neighbors.

Shizuka sucks him, quite softly and with inexperience, slowly and quite gently, until Watanuki sighs and whimpers a little louder and his legs shift a little more and his heels dig a little harder into the muscles covering Shizuka's ribs. Then Shizuka pulls back a little, not wanting to make a mess and not wanting to miss a second of what he suspects is coming, and when he sucks one more time, Watanuki gives a squeak and comes in his mouth. It's salty and bitter and Shizuka sucks it all down, swallowing it quickly and almost easily enough to surprise him. But it's Watanuki, and even with a bitter taste, it has the flavor of him and the life he's led, and that means Shizuka likes it.

Watanuki's hand flutters in his hair and traces little patterns on his scalp, and Shizuka looks up at him at last. Watanuki is dazed and obviously embarrassed--his face is red and his eyes are half-shut--but he's giving Shizuka that warm, gentle smile, and while Shizuka doesn't smile back, he does grab the hand cradling his head and kiss the palm. Watanuki knows what he means.


End file.
